Phase 1 Objectives include: Understand Core Community Needs, Continue to Gather Data, and Communicate Progress and Process with Stakeholders

1. Who Are Your Technology Stakeholders?

Goals : Identify and prioritize the community's technology stakeholders, create a high-level map of the technology stakeholder's characteristics, and identify the program's goal for high-priority stakeholder groups.

2. Technical Skills Inventory (Part One)

Goal : Create an inventory of what technical skills are required for technical staff, contributors, and users to develop, support, and maintain the platform.

3. Personas and Pathways

Goals : Learn how to bring contributors onto your project using tools called "personas" and "pathways," help your program plan and test how you'll interact with new contributors, and imagine what is really involved for new contributors to succeed.

4. Landscape Analysis

Goal : Understand where your program fits in the technology landscape, and use results to innovate, make decisions, identify opportunities for collaboration, and/or increase your program's usefulness or effectiveness.

5. Buy A Feature Game

Goals : Help users prioritize among a list of pre-defined (but not yet developed) features, and promote cooperation among end users.

6. Community QA Testing

Goals : Review program's current QA practices and evaluate whether they are structured in a manner that can be supported by the community, identify places for improvement, and conduct a successful round of Community QA

7. Documentation Friction Logging

Goal: Understand how usable your current documentation is via friction logging with documentation users.

Phase 2 Objectives include: Engage the Community, Grow Thoughtfully, and Consider Integration over New Development

8. Shadow Observations

Goals : Gain insight about users’ jobs, pains, and gains; l earn about users’ day-to-day work in a real-life setting; and i ncorporate end-users’ experiences into program planning.

9. Recognition and Contributions

Goals : U nderstand how the program currently recognizes contributions, u nderstand the kind of recognition that is most appreciated/motivating to each kind of contributor, and d iscover how the program can improve in this area.

10. Value Propositions for Job Descriptions

Goals : C reate a value proposition for a new program position (e.g. community manager, technical lead) to help articulate significance of allocating resources to program leadership, and optionally, c reate a job description for a new program position.

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11. Building Welcoming Communities

Goals : I dentify what documentation your program has that supports growing a successful community, and p rioritize missing documentation and develop a plan for its development.

12. Not Invented Here: Assessing Integration Options

Goals : I dentify functional requirements or feature requests that may be solved by integration, and i dentify and assess potential integration solutions to satisfy functional requirements or feature requests.

13. How We Retire Features

Goals : I dentify elements of the platform that can be retired, d evelop a plan for communicating retirement plans with the community, and c ommunicate the retirement decision to the community.

Phase 3 Objectives include: Reassess Community Needs, Plan for Evolution, and Document an Exit Strategy

17. Catastrophizing - Tech Edition (Part Two)

Goal : T urn the issues identified in Part 1 of Catastrophizing into actionable plans.

18. Technical Skills Inventory (Part Two)

Goals : Update your program’s inventory of what technical skills are needed for technical staff, contributors, and users to develop, support, and maintain the platform; and i dentify new skills that your program will need to acquire or old skills that can be phased out as the program advances.

19. Developing an End-of-Life Communication Plan 

Goal: Develop plan to communicate end-of-life decisions with community.

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20. Winding Down an Open Source Software Program

Goal : Decide when a project or program is no longer useful, u nderstand how to disengage from a project or program, and d etermine what to do about code, repositories, websites, wikis, and other project or program assets.